


Artist as atrocity: a memoir

by Serymn



Category: Naruto
Genre: First Person, Gen, epistolary form
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 18:59:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6622480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serymn/pseuds/Serymn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sasori & Deidara, modern, real-world AU. "I must go back to the beginning, before Sasori and his puppets. My story wouldn't be complete without him, maybe this story will be about him. Not a story – call it autobiography, or an extended suicide note."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fic told from first-person Deidara's POV, set in an AU resembling the modern world. Since Sasori and Deidara are both artists and criminals, there will be a little gore but nothing different from the manga. I don't know much about contemporary art aside from some research and imagination. And this is for me attempting to write again after a long time of being blocked, I know it is far from perfect.

"The first step to eternal life is you have to die."  
"A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment is all you can ever expect from perfection."  
_\- Fight Club_ , Chuck Palahniuk

"I don't know about Art with a capital A. What I do know is my art. Because it concerns me. I do not speak for others. So I do not speak for things which profess to speak for others. My art, however, speaks to me."  
\- _House of Leaves_ , Mark Z. Danielewski

"…my heart can beat with bricks and strings…"  
\- _Artpop_ , Lady Gaga

**I**

If you are reading this, then I'm probably dead. You've heard of a glorious explosion, something never seen in the world before, and my name. They have speculated about that 'crazy pyromaniac artist who talks about art as an explosion', the tabloids, news websites, and social justice bloggers all with something to say about it. But that's just me, imagining a future reader of this, but of course while I'm writing it now it is for me and me alone. I'm still alive, but I'll be dead next month. Don't worry, I don't have a terminal disease or a death threat or a serial killer after me. My death would be entirely of my own will, my suicide all planned out. The only thing is _when_. I'll know when it will be when the moment presents itself, I'm certain it is near.

What's with this business of talking to an invisible audience? The scenery is so boring, its noontime and I'm only typing it on my old netbook. Something like an account of my life. A _memoir_ , that is, before I disappear. Yeah, I'm all about _art is a bang_ and _beauty is fleeting_ but I don't want to be entirely forgotten after my death. That is, if someone ever cared to open this thing and I don't accidentally explode it or something. That reminds me that I must remove the password at least before I die, and leave a note to whoever who finds it.

I'm stalling, I know. First: I'm no writer. I'm an artist, I never had patience for novels or short stories. I rather like poems – they're fleeting, shorter, has more impact, has more potential for beauty than dry prose. But I'm not here to talk about literary preferences.

I thought to write this because the past three years have been so weird. If I tell it to anyone else now, they wouldn't believe me. I need to make sense of it all. He's dead now, the person who started all the weird shit. So I must go back to the beginning, before Sasori and his puppets and his catacombs. My story wouldn't be complete without him, maybe this story will be about him. Not story – call it autobiography, or an extended suicide note.

Where do I start? Since I was young or... That's what memoirs are about, right? Or call this, "My life before Sasori".

First, things about me. I'm 21 years old and an art college dropout. How cliché is that? But then I realized that I'd rather make art than study about it, and also, I should have signed up for _Nuclear Physics_ instead of Fine Arts... But then, I never liked studying or school really. I'd rather mix my chemicals like choice paints, and the resulting explosion of color and destruction is the only thing I've ever lived for. When I experimented with Molotov cocktails and handmade fireworks from soda and peroxide when I was 12, I was in love, and my first thought on seeing the first clay bird detonate into a fleeting kaleidoscope firework, was _Holy shit I want to die that way, I want to die EXPLODING_.

Before I go to Akasuna no Sasori, I'll narrate about my (dull) childhood. There was nothing much to remember. My mother, a blonde who looks just like me (if I were a girl), died when I was two. She died young, too, the same age I am now. She had an odd way of disinfecting a toilet bowl. Weird that it's the most vivid memory I have about her.

Don't try this at home. Get a bottle of rubbing alcohol, pour it along the insides of the toilet bowl, light a matchstick and throw it there. Get away quickly. A brief ring of fire will float upwards for a moment and then disappear. Do this in a dark bathroom for full effect. She tried different shapes, my favourite one was her intricate portrait of a crow on the cement floor of an empty parking lot... it did rise up like a phoenix. She died when a fire broke out in the club where she was partying. Her name was Diana.

My childhood was spent with relatives. I was the only blonde head in that family. There's nothing remarkable to remember about it, though me and both my cousins, Akatsuchi and Kurotsuchi, used to watch cartoons and anime together huddled on the floor. Talking about what we wanted to be in the future, Akatsuchi said he just wanted to eat and be a chef, Kurotsuchi wanted to be a Volcanologist, while I fantasized about being a kamikaze pilot... and Kurotsuchi asking why the hell would anyone want to do that, and there were no wars in this peaceful age to sacrifice myself anymore…

Where am I going? I think that I'm the one losing patience. I need to get this down, fast, in one piece. Get it down fast before I die.

—

I make enough money to live by, working for a fireworks store. Minimum wage but I never needed much. My job is mostly setting up the fireworks for events like weddings or birthdays, but the people only buy a lot during new year and that was months ago. Now, there's no special events, and I doubt I can last until then.

The only person I talk to is my next-door neighbor, a platinum-blonde, purple-eyed self-proclaimed priest named Hidan. He loans me money sometimes, though many times I have doubted his sanity. He also doubted about mine. He laughed when I called myself an artist but got nothing to show in my room but dirt. He had a weird kind of rosary and preached about the apocalypse in the streets. I never listened, despite him knocking on my door sometimes like a Jehovah's Witness, but not to talk about Yahweh but of his ancient god Jashin.

He would talk about his god, with tears in the beauty of his worship, but then our landlord Kakuzu would pass by to remind us to pay our rent and bills already then Hidan would utter the most colorful string of curses. In fact it was Kakuzu who helped me find that meager job for that small Chinese fireworks store.

Now all I do all day is shape clay but still creating nothing. The minute I hold clay in my hands, despair looms, and I become angry instead. Which makes things worse. I long for the days when my mind was free.

—

 _ART, OR CRIME?_ the tabloid headline on the newsstand said, from the paper yesterday that Hidan bought. So, these past few days there have been crimes in the various art circles of the city. It seems that dead bodies are the new craze, because this one was another fourteen year old girl found preserved in a formalin aquarium, her body turned to a mermaid. She was cut in half and sewn to the tail of a large fish.

The artist suspected crucified himself in the name of eternity.

These crazies were inspired by Akasuna no Sasori, you know, the famous puppeteer who is a hunted criminal now?

These bastards with their obsession with eternity and legacy, I wanted to explode all their asses. Real art is impermanence, not this immortality bullshit. These people are blind and this bastard Sasori, who is a notorious criminal, the best puppeteer in Asia since Monzaemon, is a loony who eventually stopped using wood and steel and instead had a brilliant idea of turning people into puppets.

It was his idea, that spread this sickness. I might respect his art, but its just an _offence to me_ to try to force eternity and preserve the eternal beauty of man… when death and change is a fact of life. An _explosion_ would be good. An _explosion_ is the only true art. An _explosion_ started this world and I am convinced an _explosion_ will end everything. These damn 'artists' need a wake up call, an EXPLOSION.

Hidan would laugh at me, then Kakuzu would remind me of all the money I had to pay for damages if I was carried away by this 'I wanna explode everything' and destroyed the apartment building. You know, I know it is impossible but if I meet that Sasori guy I'd threaten to explode his stupid puppet collection to show him what true art is. Don't care if people hail him as the modern Da Vinci, he's got nothing on me. I hate the guy so much for all these imitators he spawned and this art craze that I hope won't become like an _era_ like the Renaissance, death and mutilation and aspiring for immortality.

But meanwhile, me... I'm ashamed to admit it, but ever since dropping out of school I never worked on my art much. I mean, I create but never finish a thing. I'm never satisfied with what I make. I'm (I hate the word) _blocked_. I know I should practice and create, but my work falls short of the magnificence in my imagination. The city is crowded, congested with too many people and buildings, I long for open space. I wish to whatever gods that I could begin again, feel that exhilaration again. I blame school a little.

—

Hidan said there was a free art exhibit at the city's Cultural Center. The CC is a place for concerts and dances, plays and such. I pass by there a lot to look at sculptures and paintings. I don't talk to the artists that much if they're there because when I start talking about my art views they'd look at me with my long hair and crazy face and think I'm pretentious. So I don't talk anymore I just look and somehow try to find the magic, the feeling of creation. I am a dry desert as barren as Suna. My life only has meaning when I create, and for some reason I can't.

Hidan said he happened to pass by there, and the latest exhibit retrospective about Akasuna no Sasori entitled _Artist as Atrocity._ I scoffed, but I also wanted to see if I can see if some of his creations were there, so I can study them and see for myself if he deserved the title of genius. The CC was a twenty-minute walk away so I stopped for cheeseburger and coke at a McDonald's and imagined what I might see there.

I went there that night. There was no one around, it was a weekday and the place was usually crowded on weekends. I saw Sasori's exhibit, but I was pretty disappointed when I didn't see any of the works of the puppeteer himself, but only pictures of them. Beautiful dolls.

Sasori was a hunted _criminal_. He turned PEOPLE into PUPPETS. And somehow there were these sick people who admired his art, I dread to say it, his _fans_ , and he started this annoying freaks who claim to be inspired and cosplay as dolls, who even go so far as write letters to him that he may preserve them after death… That's sick, so wrong, to want that grisly immortality and what an ugly, fictional word, _immortality_. Words associated with Sasori, words that defined his art: _eternal, enduring, legacy, classic_.

God, I hate these places, the dust-covered permanent displays that hasn't changed for years…

I wandered around, though my fists clenched and my teeth ground against itself inside my mouth. The puppets pictures, juvenilia, before Sasori ran away and was never found again.

Some doll that looked like a scorpion. Those that looked like Peking Opera, realer than wax replicas, even if I don't agree with this eternal art, I admire how prolific he is. These hundreds of pictures, these puppets, he must have made a thousand…

(and while me, what's the last thing I did? I squeeze clay in my palms, forming nothing, trying to form distorted birds and animals, and I wish I had mouths on my palms that can make the sculptures in my mind, but for some reason I cannot. I cannot create art again, and try as I might I only think of that perfect thing I cannot grasp at. I might as well kill myself now, nothing to show, how can I call myself an artist? Clay is empty, and I've tried it before, turning them to

EXPLOSIONS)

I walked around the empty gallery, alone with my raging thoughts, until I was sick of looking at Sasori's pictures, not art itself but an image of it, then I walked fast the maze of walls to eventually find the exit around here somewhere when I was suddenly stopped by

 _Transformation I-IV,_ the installation's label on the floor said, white Helvetica on a black plastic label. I took a step back, there is a circle carpet like a multi-colored Buddhist mandala on the floor. Four chairs faced the four directions. On the chairs sat puppets, sculptures that look almost the same. They were sculptures of the same _boy_ , red haired, pale, pretty. It looked so damn real I was taken aback.

The first was looked like it was still a flesh-and-blood human.

The second one exposed mechanical insides, now half-human.

The third one, had a heart on his hand, and from skin it looked like the flesh was replaced with porcelain or something else, but it implied that it was no longer skin.

The fourth was empty. As if the boy, now a puppet, has already walked away. It was the blank space that caused more dread that I walked away and saw the exit.

The exit led to the parking lot. I turned toward the street to go back home, and then I came face to face with a boy with the same face from _Transformation I-IV._

—

I looked at him, then back at the exhibits. My instinct told me to run but for some reason my feet stayed in place. This was so sudden that I felt my sense of reality shift.

He smiled, amused, as if he read how creeped out I was. "It looks like no one's interested in Sasori's exhibits today. I'm taking them, back to the artist, you're lucky this is the last day of the exhibit."

Somehow his voice, and how I saw he was a human and not part of the exhibit, relieved me. I didn't walk away, but instead I found myself following him back to the gallery as he took down the pictures.

"Hey, can I help?" I asked and he nodded.

There were around a hundred pictures, and I took the pictures from the walls. He began disassembling the _Transformation I-IV._ It was uncanny looking at the boy carting off his replicas to the parking lot. So this Sasori used cute boys like him as his models. This one looked younger than me. I wonder how was it for him to _pose_ for these series of sculptures.

When he was done taking the sculptures away so he helped me take the rest of the frames on display. He stacked the pictures on the cart, and pushed it towards the exit. I followed him, helping him unload the things on the back of a small truck.

"If you're going somewhere, I can take you for a ride," he said. It was already dark outside and his was the last car in the parking lot.

"I think I can use that, thanks... I live nearby, anyway, just along Weaver street," I said, and opened the front seat of the car.

He drove in silence. We found ourselves stuck in the night traffic, though my street was only a turn away. Without thinking, I stole glances at him throughout ride. There was something weird about him that I could not place or describe.

"I'll go down here, thanks again," I said, and he stopped the car outside the gate of the apartment building. I got down and got a last look at him before he left.

"By the way," he said, and in the dark I can only see the gleam of his eyes and the whites of his teeth, he's grinning.

"Transformation one-to-four... is a _self-portrait_ of the artist."

Then he sped away. So that's what was _off_ about him. It was a delayed realization. Forgive my words, but jesus christ, that was... it was _Akasuna no Sasori_ himself _._ My guts tell me that he's the real thing.

I just came face to face with the artist I loathed but never met (until now). Somehow, I felt at that moment, that my life will never again be the same.

... _to be continued_


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out this is the last chapter of this experimental story.

**II**

I fell asleep, deep, and dreamless. I woke early, and jumped to my clay. I recall the strangeness of the previous day. Sasori. I saw his work with my own eyes, and while I thoroughly despised his concept of art (I would have started arguing with him if I wasn't so surprised that it was _him_ ) I had to start now if I ever wanted to be on his level. What was it, exactly, that made him introduce himself to me? For his own amusement? A little thanks for my little help?

So I worked on my clay, shaping birds and animals, opening my bottles of chemicals again, reworking the mediocre things. I can feel it, art is coming back to me... I stopped thinking and just let myself work, until Hidan knocked on my door and shouted he had food for both of us to eat, for lunch.

"What the hell happened to your face?" he asked me.

Then I looked at my hands covered with soot, felt my uncombed hair, and my clothes and face smeared with clay.

"I'm creating again, Hidan," I said, and opened the door for him to see the clay figures scattered on the floor, the sketches on the unmade bed sheets.

"Oh wow. It looks like you're creating things other than clay lumps," he said.

I smiled. I felt like myself again, after a long time. Watch out, Sasori, and all you eternal-art freaks out there. Its my goddamn time.

—

I worked nonstop for several weeks. I never felt this good in my life... but then experimenting with explosives in my own room didn't suit well with Kakuzu, the landlord. So I looked for other places, in garbage dumps, in the empty, barren lands just across the city. And out here, in the space where nothing surrounded me but grass and sky, I didn't limit myself anymore. I shaped and sculpted giant birds and dragons, out of sand and clay. I made them and once they were done, I'd explode them to the sky. I can say that I am _happy_ , but somehow there was still something missing.

—

"Some haven for the art freaks. Those sick hipsters who mutilate others and themselves. Illegal shit, but the stylized corpses sell for a fortune in the black market. At least that's what I've heard," said Kakuzu. I can hear them talk from inside my room, so I went out to find him chatting with Hidan over bottles of beer.

"What's that about, Kakuzu?" I asked.

"Ah, interested, Deidara? You're one of them, too?"

"No. I just want to show those bastards what real art is."

"Huh? You're gonna go in there and just explode them?" Hidan asked.

"Okay. There's this big upcoming event tonight. An auction in an underground bar. Its near Regency. If you go to that 7-11 store by 35th street and say that I sent you, they'll take you in."

"Do you have anything to do with them, Kakuzu?"

"I just know some operators who don't care about art but about the profit. Go ahead if you're so curious. Tell me about it after, that's all."

Oh well. I packed some clay into my bag, and headed there that night just to see if it was worth the hype.

—

It didn't take me long to see the building. This was in Regency, an affluent neighborhood filled with artsy nightclubs and bars. Never went here until now. I entered the place and it was crowded. I was standing and shoulders were pressed against me, all these art freaks so eager to see the show.

I move slowly across the crowd, towards the tables. I saw a familiar face. Sasori was here. He smiled at me and gestured that sit beside him. All these people were not aware that he was _here_.

He handed me his drink, glass still full of neon-blue liquid that glowed in the dark. I nodded my thanks. I can barely see the stage, but I looked up and saw for the first time that the thing hovering above us all is a dismembered angel. Arms splayed open in sacrifice, eyes towards the heavens, naked skin painted red for blood. The ribs were carefully cut open and broken into wide wings. I suppressed the urge to gag, this is a real corpse above us, turned to art.

Sasori looked with distaste. Oh, _Transformation_ was more beautiful and a lot less disgusting than this. I lean close and whisper to his ear because there was so much noise around.

"I don't agree with all these at all. You know how all these freaks were first inspired by _you_? True art is fleeting, the only constant thing in the world is change..." I say, and before I finished he cut me off.

"What," he said in a cold tone, and for the first time I saw a hint of anger in those cool, bored eyes. It was... somehow satisfying, to see this untouchable artist react.

"What all of them can't see," I say, and smile.

"That's where you and I differ, my friend. Let me enlighten you: beauty made to endure and last for eternity is the only art worth making."

I'm beginning to love this.

"Have you thought of it? Even the word _eternity_ is a lie. Its a fact of life, nothinglasts forever, dear _Master_ Sasori," I say.

"So show me your art, then," he said.

"Okay. But I haven't told you my name yet. I'm Deidara."

I got a handful of clay spiders from my belt bag and he scoffed and laughed when he saw them. "That's it?" he asks.

"This is just the beginning, Master. You better watch," I said, threw the clay spiders in front of me, and everything around us exploded in magnificent indigo fireworks.

—

Everyone panicked, people screamed as they scrambled for the exits. Fire alarms screeched. The Angel of the Lord made of flesh swayed above us. Everything was in chaos quickly, people around us running. All these eternal-art freaks had their asses scared off from a small explosion. That wasn't even the best of me yet. Only me and Sasori sat still, in silence, amidst everyone's screams and yelling for safety. They failed to notice us, the two people unaffected by everything.

"You call that art?" he asked, with the same cool, mocking face.

"The only real one that is."

"Wait until I show you mine," he said, and we calmly walked out, following the last of the crowd to the fire exit.

—

This Sasori really wanted to prove me wrong. He was smiling as we drove off once again in the same truck where I first talked to him.

"Consider this an honor," he said.

"I do." My heart beat faster. He was about to show me his art. He was dead serious about proving me wrong. I smiled, and that was the most unlikely way to start a friendship. At least that's what I thought of him that time, like a new friend.

We stopped at the old Metropolitan Theater. Built in the 1930's, it is now a dilapidated, abandoned building, untouched for more than half a century. So this is where Sasori lived. We walked inside, passed by decades-worth of molds and dust and he led me to an abandoned theater. He pressed on something on the floor with his foot, and there appeared a square hole on the floor. He unlocked it, and pushed the surface away. I walked down the stairs with him. I think I should have been scared that time but I wasn't.

Twelve feet deep, and we stop. He turns on the light and I gasp.

Hundreds of puppets, all looking like real humans, lined each side of the wide hallway. There were so many of them and I don't know why I almost fainted. The sheer quantity, the mastery of making each and every one of this. I may disagree with his art, but I was overwhelmed... I was truly face to face with the masterworks of this century. Rumor has it that Sasori can make these puppets move and that they were somehow realer than the real thing.

But I also knew, that there were rumors that he worked with dead bodies. That he killed his victims and claim them as works of art. And seeing all these, I believed the rumors were true.

Sasori smiled at seeing my reaction.

"I may disagree with you, but I truly am honored. You deserve the legend around you, Akasuna no Sasori."

I went near the puppets, looking in awe at all their detail. It was like I was looking through the history of the world, here were puppets resembling people of all races, all so alive.

"Rumor has it that you turned people into puppets. If these used to be living people, Sasori, then how did you..." I asked.

"I only ever turned _four_ people into puppets. I tell you, they _are_ much harder than these ones," he said.

I imagined that it must be. Gutting a dead body, with all the blood and organs, and reconstructing that from the inside... I didn't ask anymore who were the lucky four people that were added to his collection.

—

The days that followed were a blur. I spent more hours in Sasori's place, him showing me the intricacies of puppetry, but him showing nothing but disdain when I try to explain clay and detonation to him. He disliked my art but I could see he had no one here to talk to anyway. I've been working and working more ever since. I've forgotten about my day job, even, and realized I've stopped going there the time I met Sasori.

I spent more time there than in my own room, until a couple of months have passed that I haven't paid and Kakuzu evicted me, with reason. I moved in Sasori's lair. I didn't have a lot of possessions and I was content sleeping on an old mattress in a spare room. Sasori didn't seem to sleep.

I found out, later, the reason for all his odd habits.

I've never fully explored the place outside of the room where I sleep, I didn't intrude on Sasori working. I didn't tease him anymore starting that day when a thick whip made out of poisonous blades threatened to behead me when I was about to start another argument on art.

One time when I was wandering about the rooms in the dark, with hundreds of puppets and dolls in every corner that looked at me, I saw Sasori and his real body. He was so intent on working on the insides of this one puppet that he never noticed me looking at him. He didn't have a shirt on and I see for the first time, the ball joints on his shoulders, the alchemical symbols painted over his artificial skin, the semi-translucent cylinder on his chest where the only living flesh can be seen: a beating heart.

It only occurred to me now how Sasori was able to maintain his youth. He killed his real body a long time ago and turned himself into art. As much as I disagreed, I can't help but be speechless.

I have always, in my heart, wanted to die in a magnificent explosion that will burn bright for a single glorious perfect moment. I have always dreamed of my own body exploding...

He noticed me looking.

"I... want to be like you," I admitted to him.

"What, you want to be a puppet too?"

"No. I want to turn myself into a work of art, like you... I don't know how you managed to..." Truly, Sasori was at a level of genius I cannot equal.

"Turning yourself to a living bomb?" Sasori said, as if thinking. Then he nodded to himself. "Yes, it is quite possible."

"Will you help me?" I asked.

"Give me a few weeks. Are you serious about it?"

"Yeah."

A long pause.

"Ah, no. I can't, Deidara. That would probably kill you."

"That's the _point,_ right?"

"What I mean is turning your body into a living bomb can be fatal. Eating your bombs would be more effective, really."

"Oh, you must want me to stay a little longer, huh?"

"If you really want to die that way, then I assume you must already have bombs powerful enough."

"Well, yeah. My final art should be my best masterpiece. Should take time," I said.

—

I can't describe exactly how things fell into place. But it also felt like I was meant to meet Sasori all along, and even if we disagreed we both knew that in the end we were in this together: as artists. But I also knew, like all things, it wouldn't last forever.

Sasori didn't tell me much about his former life, because for me what matters is the work and art we do now. But I have gathered enough from search engines and even old encyclopedias. What I've known are not much. From an old Grolier, there was only a few lines about his life. His grandmother was called Chiyo, a renowned master puppeteer who had used puppets as weapons for the military of Suna during the last World War. Sasori inherited the gift for puppetry and soon was known to surpass even his grandmother. The third Kazekage, Suna's head of state, disappeared around the time Sasori also escaped from Suna. There is persistent rumor that he is already dead, and it was Sasori who killed him. (I never asked Sasori about all this)

Then there came a day he was gone from my life almost as fast as he arrived...

—

I was awoken by a noise outside. I went up, past the secure locks and doors that Sasori used to hide his home. I walk to the old, abandoned theater above and found that he had a visitor, an old woman.

"Deidara," Sasori said, "Please get out. I was just having a little reunion with Grandma over here."

Fierce-looking puppets surrounded the old woman, Chiyo. I had thought she was dead.

"I really did not wish that it would come to this. That I've come here to stop you once and for all."

Sasori remained indifferent. He had dismembered corpses and turned them into puppets, he wouldn't be afraid of one old woman. This was a family affair I wasn't part of.

"No one had seen you since you left Suna, since the Third Kazekage disappeared," she said.

"Oh well. He's here," Sasori said, and with a flick of his fingers there appeared behind him a tall man in a black robe. There was shock in the old woman's face, but she'd also been expecting this.

"Leave now, Deidara," he said to me, then to his grandmother: "I will surrender to Suna if you can defeat me."

It was late at night, and I headed to the same bar in Regency. No more art freaks, just a rock band that played until dawn. Sasori would handle it. I thought, I'd go back to check up on the old apartment and tell Kakuzu that I was still alive and I would pay the missed rent.

—

I didn't go back for a couple of days, just until the front page of the newspaper on Hidan's table shocked me. Sasori's dead.

There's a big, beautiful picture on the cover. Sasori is standing amidst the ruins of the Metropolitan Theater, There are two puppets embracing him, both holding swords that pierced through the container that held his heart. What a bloody idiot, to have shown his weakness like that.

I read the news about it below.

_Legendary puppeteer Akasuna no Sasori was found and defeated by his own grandmother, also known as the great Chiyo. For years, Suna has tried but has been unable to locate him. Though an acclaimed artist and considered the best in this last century, Sasori has been a wanted criminal with an expensive bounty on his head, dead or alive._

And, according to Chiyo,

" _He could have dodged, it was not my intention to kill my own grandson. He was more powerful than me." Chiyo did not accept Suna's reward, but said instead that the money should be used for the country._

_Sasori's priceless and numerous artworks were claimed by Suna._

I wasn't so surprised. Well, it had been an amazing time... He didn't last. But I will always remember him, truly good things in life are fleeting...

Ironic, in the eternal art he wanted... he had to die. Maybe that was his intention all along.

**III**

All these, that I have written above, happened two years ago.

I think I've done a good job of moving on, and found that even if I miss it I don't think about it much anymore...

I passed by a book store today, and a book caught my eye. A large, red hardbound, the cover a dark shade that was the same color as blood. Engraved in gold letters was the title, _Artist as Atrocity: the life and works of Sasori of the Red Sand_ , written by a guy called 'Kankuro of Suna'. I flipped through the pages, and there were familiar pictures of puppets I had seen, with detailed descriptions of their workmanship and history. The author, Kankuro, was a puppeteer himself.

On the last pages, I see that _Transformation I-IV_ is finally complete. On the last empty chair, there was Sasori's body. The body he had when I knew him. I closed the book and didn't buy it, I'm gonna die soon anyway, what's the use?

—

Meanwhile, I have finished this story and there is nothing more to tell. I will leave this for someone else to find. It took me two years after Sasori's death to design and plan, exactly, how my last masterpiece would go.

Later, while everyone had thought that this was just another normal day in their mundane lives...

They will witness beauty like no other in the sky. I will show them my last explosion of light, they would witness with their eyes how stars are born and how they will die. And oh, I can't wait for it anymore... goodbye, goodbye, to this beautiful, fleeting world.

_-end-_


End file.
